Ethiopia, France Sign 3 Grant Agreements worth €19mln
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopia and France have signed three grant agreements amounting to nineteen million euros (or approximately 1.02 billion birr) on Tuesday.
The grant agreements, signed at the ministry of finance head office in Addis Ababa, would fund three development and capacity building projects in Ethiopia.
The biggest of the three grants, €10 million, would go to increase the performance and service delivery capacity of the state-owned electric producer, Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP).
The fund will be used to strengthen EEP’s efficiency by boosting the skill level of its human resources, sustainably, and participation of women, said the Ministry of Finance.
Financing the construction and equipping a training center is also part of the intervention.
Restoring of Heritage sites
President Emanuel Macron pledged to support Ethiopia’s heritage site restoration effort during his visit to Addis Ababa in March, 2019.
The commitment involves not only preserving heritage sites important to both countries, but also sharing of technical expertise and skills between the two countries.
The second €8 million grant agreement would support the second phase of the government’s restoration and public opening of the national heritage sites in the capital, said the finance Ministry.
The ministry also said the third grant agreement signed today would see France allocate a million euros in support of the Agency for Civil Society Organizations.
The support aims at building and strengthening the Agency’s institutional capacity to carry out an organizational transformation, enabling it to achieve its objectives as per the recently revised Civil Societies Proclamation, the finance Ministry said.
The three grant agreements were signed between Ethiopia’s State Minister of Finance Semereta Sewasew, Country director of French Development Agency (AFD) Valerie Tehio, and France’s Ambassador to Ethiopia, Rémi Maréchaux.
